


paint my spirit gold

by spacenarwhal



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Separation Anxiety, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-24 02:10:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10731987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: On the books Captain Cassian Andor and Sergeant Jyn Erso have officially shared quarters for over four months, but Jyn thinks she can probably count on both hands the number of nights they’ve actually spent there together. The Rebellion’s war keeps them both away, sometimes together, but more often than not apart. It feels like a luxury to come back and find him there, sitting on the bunk, legs crossed beneath him in a way that makes him look unusually young, dark hair falling into his eyes as he fiddles with a gutted datapad on his lap.“You’re back.” She says, dropping her things on the floor by the door, next to his own duffle, dusty and cracked from sun exposure. She doesn’t know where they sent him but she hopes wherever it was he was at least warm.





	paint my spirit gold

**Author's Note:**

> One day I'm gonna be over the idea of these two sharing a tiny bed...it is not this day.

On the books Captain Cassian Andor and Sergeant Jyn Erso have officially shared quarters for over four months, but Jyn thinks she can probably count on both hands the number of nights they’ve actually spent there together. The Rebellion’s war keeps them both away, sometimes together, but more often than not apart. It feels like a luxury to come back and find him there, sitting on the bunk, legs crossed beneath him in a way that makes him look unusually young, dark hair falling into his eyes as he fiddles with a gutted datapad on his lap. 

“You’re back.” She says, dropping her things on the floor by the door, next to his own duffle, dusty and cracked from sun exposure. She doesn’t know where they sent him but she hopes wherever it was he was at least warm.

(She still teases him, when she can, when both of them are capable of being in a teasing mood, of how cold he runs all the time, huddled in his endless array of jackets. “Even Bodhi’s not this bad.” Jyn grins, taking a chance by looping her scarf around his neck and using the ends of it to pull him down. Cassian colors slightly, rolls his eyes, but he lets her, follows the forward motion and his mouth twitches against hers when she draws him into a kiss.)

Cassian looks up from his work, face leaner still than when she last saw him three weeks ago. His eyes are tired and there’s a bruise yellowing the skin around his left eye, but he smiles at her, the expression small but unrestrained, makes the uneasy feeling Jyn carries inside whenever they’re apart settle into something she can almost ignore.

“I’m back.” He answers, and Jyn lets her legs carry her closer, touches him as soon as he’s within reach. He’s real, of course he is, but the confirmation is always nice. Jyn touches the side of his face, tips his face towards the light. It’s stark and blinding, bare white light that bleaches everything bland and still startles her from time to time, but it serves its purpose now, lets her examine his face better. “It’s nothing.” Cassian says dismissively, one hand reaching up to circle around her wrist, fingers squeezing reassuringly. 

“Obviously.” Jyn mumbles, because she knows he’s more than capable. You don’t survive this long in a war without being able to take care of yourself, she won’t insult him by thinking otherwise. But there’s still that edge of worry digging into her just beneath her ribs, the jolt that comes from thinking of him alone and injured. She smooths her thumb around the edge of the discoloration. Beneath her eyes he looks utterly exhausted.

She pushes his hair off his forehead, but there’s no other injuries to see. Cassian’s expression isn’t quite a smile anymore but it’s still soft, yielding. (Oh wonder of wonders, Jyn thinks, Cassian Andor yielding. It does something funny to her, reminds her of being a child in a room made up of glass and steel and velveteen things, sneaking sweets off a table. She’s just waiting to get caught.)

“I have to wash the stink of tauntaun off.” Jyn says sourly, careful to keep her fingers light as she smooths them over his scalp—no abrasions or bumps for her to find—not entirely sure even now of how to ask if he’ll wait for her to come back. Cassian leans back, the curve of his skull coming to rest against her palm, “Go. I’m going to keep working on this for a while.” 

Jyn nods, silently grateful. She gives into the urge to drop a kiss on his forehead—it’s alright she tells herself, this is alright—and Cassian makes a faint sound at the back of his throat. She thinks she might have caught him off guard. She grins at him as she steps away. 

The sonic is quick work (water is too heavily rationed as it is to waste any on bathing) and Jyn shivers her way into cleaner clothes, shrugs on her jacket and tries not to think about how fruitless washing off is when there’s no getting the horrible smell of wet tauntaun out of the coat that’s integral to her not freezing to death during the short walk down the corridor between the public ‘freshers and their room. She still smells better than she ever did on Wobani, so there’s that at least. 

Cassian, true to his word, is still awake when she returns. He’s standing by the small desk that doubles as shelving, where he’s deposited the mess of wires and bits that were once a functioning datapad. Jyn watches him stretch, the shift of his back beneath his shirt, the narrow strip of skin he exposes when he lifts his arms above his head. He’s still whipcord thin, lean from years of surviving on the bare minimum. 

Cassian turns on a yawn, raises an eyebrow when he finds her staring. Jyn doesn’t blush, she simply doesn’t, shrugs in response as though there wasn’t already a tinge of excitement low in her belly. Cassian lowers his arms slowly, reaches for the untucked hem of his shirt and pulls it up over his head, leaves his hair an unruly mess. Jyn bites down on a grin at the sight of him, lets her jacket fall to the ground behind her. It’s not going to smell any worse for her carelessness. 

They undress themselves, movements quick and efficient, make sure to toss their clothes to the end of the bunk so they can find them easily afterward. Her skin breaks out into goosebumps almost immediately and when his hands reach for her it’s to rub his palms up and down the length of her arms, chafing warmth into her skin. 

“What happened here?” He asks, touch skirting around a bruise that’s mostly painless now, spreading out over her shoulder. Jyn’s hands go still at his sides, fingers spread wide to touch as much of him as possible. She can feel the peaks and valleys of his ribs beneath his skin and wonders where he’s been. She frowns.

“One of the new recruits got a little overenthusiastic during hand-to-hand training.” Jyn answers primly. When Cassian cups the side of her face she doesn’t lean into the touch, watches his face carefully for any sign of disapproval. But Cassian just grins wryly, fingers trailing behind her ear and reaching further back still, pulling her hair out of its untidy knot. “I’d hate to be him.” He rubs at her scalp where her hair’s crinkled from being tied back, runs his fingers through it a few times to work loose the knots. It’s terrible, how much she can miss him when he’s standing right in front of her, almost as though in preparation for their next parting. 

Jyn cracks a thin smile. “Don’t worry he walked away fine.” Mostly. If nothing else he learned not to drop his guard even after knocking an enemy down. 

“C’mere.” She says, tired of talking when they’re already standing naked. She wraps her arms around him, runs her fingers up the length of his spine. Cassian shivers as her fingers drag over the tight-knit ridge of scar tissue the surgeons left behind. She wonders if it’s the steel plates, the pins and rods held secure beneath his skin that makes the cold sink so much deeper into him, or if it's some token from his home world he carries with him, an invisible mark only he can feel. To her, Cassian feels like the warmest thing she’ll ever touch. She dreams sometimes of touching him and watching her own skin blister, the way a blaster graze wounds. Jyn wakes from those dreams and wonders where all her sense self-preservation has gone. 

They shuffle towards the bunk together, still touching, his palm scorching where it rests against the small of her back, his hip sharp under her hand, slip beneath the blankets silently. The bedding is cold all over but it warms quickly. Cassian presses close and closer still, tangles their limbs together and kisses her again, one hand resting against the nape of her neck. It’s a languid kiss, slow and deep, makes Jyn shiver for reasons other than cold.

“Jyn.” He sighs, nose pressed to her cheek and stubble rough against her skin, “Jyn.” He says her name like he’s remembering the sound of it, like it’s something important he’s gone without for too long and Jyn nods silently, clutches at him with greedy hands. He’s here. She’s here. They’re alright for now.

It never feels real. Even now with every day that Scarif trails further and further behind them Jyn can’t shake the dread of how quickly she can lose this. All her life home has only ever been a temporary haven at best, family a quickly-fleeing commodity. What will make this any different?

(Nothing, Jyn knows. Nothing, nothing, nothing. She set the countdown in motion the moment she decided to stay.)

Cassian pulls back, mouth red and still soft to look on, studies her face with a degree of scrutiny that manages to make Jyn feel more naked than a lack of clothes ever does. Jyn meets his gaze head on, heart beating in her throat. “What happened?” Jyn asks, hand pressing against his chest, just over his heart. 

Cassian’s mouth tightens, his leg slips between hers, warm and heavy. “My informant spooked. Nothing more.”

Jyn frowns, unsatisfied by his answer but she knows there’s no point asking for more when he can’t offer it freely. “Have you been given your next assignment yet?” She keeps her voice neutral. 

Cassian shakes his head. “No, but I have a meeting early tomorrow. I expect then—”

Jyn nods, kisses him again. “Right.”

Cassian nods too, “Right,” but there’s a harshness to the kiss that follows that undermines the calmness in his features, the steadiness of his voice. Jyn meets that head on as well. 

Cassian rolls on his back at the push of her palms, watches Jyn as she moves to straddle him, stares up at her with a kind of adoration that makes Jyn’s skin heat, its own kind of pleasure. The blankets slip down her back, pool at their waists when she pushes herself upright. 

He looks at her, all of her, and Jyn leans back, lets him see. She knows what she looks like. As scrawny and scarred as he is beneath her. Neither of them have any delusions about who they are, what they’ve been, and there’s a relief in knowing there’s no need for excuses between them. 

He reaches upward, trails a hand over her side—a bolt burn, years old, the result of friendly fire when she was fourteen—and cups her right breast. There’s a pensiveness in his features, something slightly out of place considering what they’re doing, and Jyn thinks in another life he might have been a scholar rather than a soldier, all the grinding gears of his intellect devoted to something other than war. Would she love him then? In another life, if they’d each lost less, if they had more to their names than their blasters and this cause and the blood they’ve spilled to save themselves? Would they still want each other? 

Cassian doesn’t call her beautiful or anything like it when he touches her, pulls her down so that she’s bent closer, presses kisses against her chest, licks and bites with one hand grasping her thigh. Jyn shift atop him, captures his mouth in a kiss to quiet the nagging uncertainty in her head. Something about seeing him tonight has made her overly melancholic herself, and she blames the long day and this frozen world and the tiredness in his face she’ll never be able to dispel any better than he can do away with the scars on her skin, blames all of it for the desperation with which she presses her mouth to his, always looking for something else to remind her that they’re both here. This is what matters. 

They’re quiet people in bed, each of them used to quick encounters in the dark, mindful of how sound carries into the corridors all over Echo Base. They’re the subject of enough rumors. There’s no need to add any more. Jyn breathes in sharply when he slips his fingers over her cunt, Cassian bites down on a grunt when she wraps her hand around him, strokes over him a few times before lowering herself on him. 

“Oh,” Jyn exhales, mouth falling open around the sound before she can stop it. She wants to tell him that she touched herself while he was gone, that she’d imagined this, riding him on this stupidly narrow bed they call their own, imagined him inside her, how her fingers were never quite enough to satisfy the ache she feels when he’s gone. She wants to ask Cassian if he thinks of her when he’s away, when he’s lightyears removed from her, embedded in a foreign world wearing a stranger’s name, if Cassian misses her the way she does him. If he doesn’t Jyn wants to know his secret, how he’s managed to evade it. It feels like it would be a good skill to have. Jyn presses her lips closed and rocks her hips a little harder. 

The bunk squeaks beneath them, the sheets rustle as they move, their breathing quickens. Cassian’s fingers dig into her hips, roam over her thighs, eyes fixed on her face as she moves.

Jyn drops a hand between her legs, closes her eyes. She works her fingers quickly, chases the tightening heat curling over and around itself inside her skin, makes a strangled questioning sound when Cassian’s hand stills hers. “Slower.” He says, word thick on his tongue, breath short, “Just—” His hips roll upward, slowly, deliberately, and Jyn bites back a laugh, a moan, shakes her head and shivers at the feeling of her hair against her sweaty back. “Slower then.” She agrees, and he grins up at her like he hears the challenge in her voice, hands going to her hips again.

Jyn does laugh then, drapes herself over his chest and kisses the underside of his jaw, the side of his neck, bites at his collarbone where it juts up under his sweat-slick skin. More time. More. Cassian understands what it means to constantly hear a countdown keeping time in your head, to live with a time bomb strapped around your beating heart.

When Jyn comes she muffles her gasp against his chest, hips still grinding forward as her body goes rigid all over. Cassian’s hand is heavy where it rests on her back and he whispers her name as he catches his breath. Jyn presses a kiss over his heart, her whole body throbs, keeps time with her own racing pulse.

They don’t remain like that for long, the cold creeping in all around them. Jyn rolls away and Cassian plucks their clothes from where they’ve gotten wedged between the bunk and the nearest wall. When Jyn pulls on her shirt she’s surprised the fabric hasn’t gone stiff with cold. Cassian gets out of bed long enough to grab spare socks from his duffle, tosses her a pair she slips on gladly. “I hate this place.” She says, scooting away from the bunk’s edge so that he can fit beside her. “Eh, it’s not so bad.” Cassian says, noncommittally.

They maneuver together, his arm beneath her shoulders and Jyn on her side, facing away from him while his chest presses up against her back. His other arm drops around her waist and hauls her closer, their legs bent together like interlocking plates. He bumps his head against the back of hers, his breath warm on the back of her neck. They lie quietly for a long while, and the lights power off as scheduled, their daily ration used up. Well, Jyn thinks, burrowing further beneath their blanket and against him, at least neither one of them had to get up to turn it off. 

It’s almost peaceful lying there in the dark, warmth building around them, the hum and murmur of Echo Base quieting as the night shifts begin. Cassian’s breathing steadies. Jyn inhales, a long slow pull of air, the taste of sweat still lingering on the tip of her tongue. Cassian’s fingertips sneak beneath the hem of her shirt where its rucks up, dance around her navel. It tickles lightly, makes her squirm under the touch. She pinches the back of his hand until he goes still.

She opens her mouth, almost tells him about the newest rumor making its way around Echo Base. There’s talk of a new squadron taking form, a division of soldiers more in line with Saw’s partisans than the model rebel the Alliance likes to tout. According to Solo her name’s come up a few times now. Any excitement she feels at the prospect of going out into the field regularly is tempered by the knowledge that it’ll mean more time away. From Bodhi and the others. From Cassian. (Another chance to die on her own.) There are reasons why fraternizing among the ranks is frowned upon and those are the same reasons they’re rarely assigned to the same missions these days.

Some days Jyn worries she made the wrong choice in choosing this over being able to watch his back out on the field, days she knows the choice will come back to haunt her—like all the other selfish choices before it—but there are days Jyn knows she would never give up the way he says her name or looks at her in these moments, when they’re not the titles in front of their names or the weapons they carry, when they’re simply people, when they can touch each other and love each other and remember there’s more to life than the struggle of surviving to the next fight. 

Tomorrow maybe, if there’s time. He’ll learn about it one way or another. There’s no reason to worry him with something that might not happen for a while yet.

Her eyes grow heavy and heavier still, and Jyn lets herself sink into the contentment she feels, another memory to hold on to when it’s over. 

Cassian says something, voice soft and half-muffled against her hair. It disrupts the sleepy stillness building up inside her, makes her blink against the darkness. She must be more tired than she realized because it takes her a moment to register she doesn’t understand what he said. She presses his hand more firmly against her stomach. Jyn waits and his breathing shifts, deliberately calm, as though he’s steadying to take a shot.

“I missed you.” He says in Standard and Jyn huffs out a short, flippant sound. “I’m sure you did.” She answers, keeps her voice light, knocks her feet against his shins.She wishes she could force out what she means to say.

He fares only slightly better than she does when it comes actually _saying_ things. His emotions have been as tightly guarded as her own, and when he speaks there’s always the impression of him finding his way around what he’s trying to say, the hesitation and frustration that comes from feeling around in the dark. She doesn’t know how to tell him she’s in the same dark place as he is, just as lost, just as desperate to make her way out.

“I missed you too.” She says at last, throat easing around the words. They’re not so frightening once they’ve been said. Jyn tugs his hand out from under her shirt and draws it up, tucks their joined hands under her chin. Jyn brushes her lips over his knuckles. “I’m glad you’re back.” 

Cassian kisses the back of her head, draws in a short breath before he answers, “It’s nice to be home.” His fingers squeeze around hers and Jyn nods, bumps her head against his gently. Home. The novelty of the notion hasn’t worn off yet. 

“You need to eat more.” Jyn complains mildly, pinching the back of his hand again, trying to smooth some of the seriousness out of the air. “You’ve gotten far too boney.” 

Cassian chuckles, sounds slightly relieved for the reprieve, “You’re one to talk.” He holds her closer, “I didn’t hear you complaining earlier.” 

Jyn grins, happy for the dark even if she can’t quite keep her voice the right level of indifferent when she sniffs, “I was obviously distracted.” 

Cassian’s laughter is a tired sound, but it’s still warm, and Jyn lets it fill her, rough and quiet though it is. Whatever hesitation she felt before thins into something different, something she can more easily push away. Fear’s never done much to protect her from further hurt. It’ll always be there, like the shadow of loss, the certainty of death. They’re old friends. They won’t diminish what she has right now. 

Cassian’s laughter fades and it doesn’t take much longer before his breathing evens out, his hold slackens around her. Jyn closes her eyes, grounds herself in his presence at her back, the warmth shared between them, and lets it lull her to sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from I Will Wait by Mumford and Son


End file.
